# Backblaze B2 vs Google Drive API + MCP

> Google Drive API + MCP has a score of 78.6 (A) against Backblaze B2's 75.4 (BB). Both do storage share. The largest gap is reliability, 30 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Google Drive API + MCP has a score of 78.6 (A) against Backblaze B2's 75.4 (BB). Both do storage share. The largest gap is reliability, 30 points.

- Backblaze B2: grade BB, 75.4/100, rank #35 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/backblaze-b2.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/backblaze-b2.json
- Google Drive API + MCP: grade A, 78.6/100, rank #12 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-drive-api.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-drive-api.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Backblaze B2 for schema & documentation (+6), payments & pricing (+5), maintenance & community (+5).

Pick Google Drive API + MCP for reliability (+30).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Backblaze B2 | Google Drive API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 90 | Google Drive API + MCP +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 89 | 83 | Backblaze B2 +6 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 85 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 90 | 86 | Backblaze B2 +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 35 | Backblaze B2 +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 85 | Backblaze B2 +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 74 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.4 · BB** | **78.6 · A** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Backblaze B2 | Google Drive API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Backblaze | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com` | `https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 40 | 8 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| MCP registry | `io.github.backblaze-labs/b2-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 1 stars, 150 npm/wk, 112k PyPI/wk | 12k stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 29.8M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (8) | 3.4/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**Backblaze B2.** $6.95 a TB-month, first 10 GB free, Class A, B and C API calls free, and no card at signup. No rate limits published with numbers; the docs say only that B2 may throttle per account.

**Google Drive API + MCP.** No charge for API calls within quota, counted in quota units per minute per project and per user. OAuth consent, scope verification and a Cloud project before an agent can list a folder.

## Before you call either

### Backblaze B2

1. Take the region from the key's S3 endpoint (the second label of s3.<region>.backblazeb2.com) and pass it as the SDK region
2. Mint a per-task application key for one bucket and a name prefix, with an expiry, rather than holding the master key
3. Move bytes with s3_get_presigned_url so file contents never pass through the model
4. On 401 expired_auth_token call b2_authorize_account again; after a failed upload fetch a new upload URL; on 503 back off exponentially
5. Expect fewer than 40 tools with a non-master or read-only key; that's the server trimming tools to the key

### Google Drive API + MCP

1. Ask for drive.file rather than drive; it needs no verification and covers files the app created or the user picked
2. Use uploadType=resumable for anything over 5 MB and send chunks in multiples of 256 KB
3. For a link that expires, share to a user or group with expirationTime; a type=anyone permission can't expire, so delete it yourself
4. Pass fields= on files.list and files.get to cut the response, and page with pageToken
5. Back off exponentially on 429 rateLimitExceeded and 403 userRateLimitExceeded; 403 storageQuotaExceeded won't clear by retrying

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